With rapid development of the third generation mobile communications technology and a massive increase in smartphone users, mobile data service traffic is also sharply increasing. To relieve pressure of the mobile data service traffic, an operator deploys a large number of small nodes on a third generation mobile communications network, where the small nodes can effectively enhance a capacity of the whole mobile communications network.
However, on a heterogeneous network where a macro base station and a small node are deployed, in a scenario in which coverage of a small node is overlaid with coverage of a macro base station, when a user equipment moves to an edge of a coverage area of a small node which is in a coverage area of the macro base station, the user equipment does not enter the coverage area of the small node; therefore, the user equipment still sends a signal to the macro base station over a direct path between the user equipment and the macro base station. When the user equipment is at the edge of the coverage area of the small node, the user equipment is relatively far from the macro base station; therefore, relatively high transmit power is needed to send the signal to the macro base station, and in this case, power consumption of the user equipment is relatively high in an edge area of the small node. In addition, an uplink working frequency of the user equipment may be the same as that of the small node; and in the edge area of the small node, when the user equipment transmits a high-power signal to the macro base station, co-channel interference is caused on uplink receiving of the small node.